[charles_f]

I think the point here is on instructionism vs. constructionism - learning by experience (constructing things) seem to work better and in particular for long term assimilation than learning from instructors telling you. I think Epstein was putting it in Range as something along the lines of "you need to struggle to really learn". Constructionism can take many forms, from hands on projects and workshops, to frequent internships and apprenticeships.

[solatic]

Right. My point is that I'm not convinced that hands-on projects and workshops, when force-fed to students within the context of a course taken at an educational institution, is inherently more effective than any other teaching method. As someone whose career is in software engineering, and who never had much interest in any of the sciences outside software engineering, I certainly remember having to do hands-on projects in required chemistry, biology, and physics courses... not that I remember much, if any, of it at all. The vast majority of true academic learning is self-directed, and the value of experience is in making mistakes that you are forced to bear the consequences of. "Consequences" do not really exist in a classroom (almost by definition), and grades (particularly in an era of grade inflation that renders them largely meaningless) do not count.

[aethertap]

I've been homeschooling my children for about four years, and figuring out how to achieve experiential learning has been a primary goal for the entire time. It has been very tricky for me to get it right, because there is a constant need to balance between over- and under-challenging them, and the process of struggling that's so crucial to learning is also self-defeating because it generates so much frustration. Emotional resilience is a skill that I think is foundational to being able to learn in this way, but it's been glossed over in the materials I've read on constructivist learning. The closest I've seen is the material about growth mindsets, but it's generally vastly oversimplified in my opinion.

The approach I'm currently working with is to ask them to do difficult tasks (such as math problems that don't have a straightforward, mechanical process to produce an answer), then I watch them work. When they get stuck, I try to get them to explore what they know and think about what would help them break a bit of new ground, but so far it's been very hard to guide without showing. Generally, they struggle for a bit and then I show them a couple of ways in which they could make progress. This seems to have very good results, but I can't imagine how it could be institutionalized effectively when you start to get beyond the most elementary topics. Even with only two students it's challenging to manage.